Law Commons^™

Exporting The Legal Incubator: A Conversation With Fred Rooney, Fred Rooney, Justin Steele

Fred Rooney

A legal conversion between Justin Steele, Executive Articles Editor of the UMass Law Review and Fred Rooney, Director of the International Justice Center for Post-Graduate Development at Touro Law Center.

On Collegiality, Michael L. Seigel

Michael L Seigel

The problem of collegiality in academia is like a crazy aunt in the family: ever present, whispered about in hallways, but rarely acknowledged directly. My goal in this article has been to initiate the demise of this pattern of unhappy toleration. The toleration stems, in large part, from an apparently widespread fear that attempts to control colleagues' uncollegial conduct will result in an unacceptable diminution of academic freedom. Although these concerns are legitimate, I have sought to prove that, if appropriate care is taken, academic freedom may flourish at the same time that a norm of basic collegiality is enforced. …

Damages: Using A Case Study To Teach Law, Lawyering, And Dispute Resolution, Leonard Riskin

Leonard L Riskin

Seven law school faculty members and one practicing attorney recently developed and taught a wholly new kind of law course based on an already published case study, Damages: One Family's Legal Struggles in the World of Medicine, by Barry Werth, an investigative reporter who spent several years researching to write the book. Damages, an in-depth account of a medical malpractice case, presents the perspectives of the injured family, the defendant physician, the lawyers, and the three mediators. In this Symposium Introduction, the authors provide a summary of Werth's book, explain why they decided to create a course based on his …

The Contemplative Lawyer: On The Potential Contributions Of Mindfulness Meditation To Law Students, Lawyers, And Their Clients, Leonard L. Riskin

Leonard L Riskin

This Article proposes that introducing mindfulness meditation into the legal profession may improve practitioners' well-being and performance and weaken the dominance of adversarial mind-sets. By enabling some lawyers to make more room for - and act from - broader and deeper perspectives, mindfulness can help lawyers provide more appropriate service (especially through better listening and negotiation) and gain more personal satisfaction from their work. Part I of this article describes a number of problems associated with law school and law practice. Part II sets forth a variety of ways in which lawyers, law schools, and professional organizations have tried to …

A Brief Exploration Of Space: Some Observations On Law School Architecture, Robert H. Jerry Ii

Robert H. Jerry II

The nature of the space in which we work, teach, and study is important. The design of our surroundings affects our attitudes, moods, self-esteem, efficiency, and sense of community. For our students, space makes a difference in the quality of the learning experience. It is possible to teach and learn in deficient space, but it is easier to teach and learn when both faculty and students are comfortable, happy, and not distracted by the inconveniences and annoyances of a poorly designed environment. Inadequate space prevents us from achieving all of which we are capable, thereby diminishing our productivity, creativity, and …

Diversity In Law Schools: Where Are We Headed In The Twenty-First Century, Jon L. Mills

Jon L. Mills

While we had historically recruited a large number of minority candidates to campus, because of the departures of our minority faculty, we needed to evaluate both our ability to recruit and our ability to retain minority faculty. Discriminatory hiring based on race is forbidden by law. The University of Florida is an equal opportunity employer. As a practical and legal matter, and in contrast to our current student admissions policy, we can consider race in employment decisions only to remedy past discrimination and only if narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest. First, it is important to understand the …

Diversity Matters: Race, Gender And Ethnicity In Legal Education., Nancy E. Dowd, Kenneth B. Nunn, Jane E. Pendergast

Kenneth B. Nunn

This Article presents more evidence of the inequality that persists in legal education for students. Based on a survey of University of Florida law students conducted in 2001, this study reaffirms the existence of differential experience and an inegalitarian culture in legal education. However, it also demonstrates the importance of diversity and the recognition by a significant majority of students of the value of race and gender pluralism. These competing findings provide a clear guide to the future direction of legal education.

Diversity Matters: Race, Gender And Ethnicity In Legal Education., Nancy E. Dowd, Kenneth B. Nunn, Jane E. Pendergast

Nancy Dowd

This Article presents more evidence of the inequality that persists in legal education for students. Based on a survey of University of Florida law students conducted in 2001, this study reaffirms the existence of differential experience and an inegalitarian culture in legal education. However, it also demonstrates the importance of diversity and the recognition by a significant majority of students of the value of race and gender pluralism. These competing findings provide a clear guide to the future direction of legal education.

Widener Adds Support For A State-Sponsored Law School, Erin Daly

Erin Daly

No abstract provided.

Women Of Color In Legal Education: Challenging The Presumption Of Incompetence, Carmen G. Gonzalez

Carmen G. Gonzalez

Female law professors of color have become the canaries in the academic mine whose plight is an early warning of the dangers that threaten legal education and the future of the legal profession. As legal education is restructured in response to declining enrollments, tenure itself is coming under fire, and downsizing and hiring freezes are becoming more common. Female law professors of color, who tend to be concentrated at middle- and lower-tier law schools, are particularly vulnerable. But this vulnerability may foreshadow the predicament of all but the most elite law faculty if academic employment becomes increasingly precarious. This article …

Collection Of Student Loans: A Critical Examination, Doug Rendleman, Scott Weingart

Doug Rendleman

No abstract provided.

The Elephant In The Admissions Office: The Influence Of U.S. News & World Report On The Rise Of Transfer Students In Law Schools And A Modest Proposal For Reform, Bruce Price, Sara Star

Bruce M Price

Students who perform well after the first year of law school are increasingly transferring to schools ranked higher by U.S. News to maximize their chances of getting a law firm job immediately following graduation. This phenomena raises two fundamental and understudied issues: how students make the decision to seek to transfer to a higher-ranked and higher-tier law school, and why such law schools are willing to admit transfer students into their second-year class who they were not willing to admit initially. The first issue we explore through interviews with students who transferred as well as those who could have transferred …

The Birth Of A New Teaching Idea.Pdf, Jalae Ulicki

Jalae Ulicki

Globalization And The Monopoly Of Aba-Approved Law Schools: Missed Opportunities Or Dodged Bullets?, Carole Silver

Carole Silver

As the market for lawyers and for law itself has responded to global forces, legal education also is becoming accustomed to working within a global context. U.S. law schools routinely look beyond the country’s borders to attract new students and opportunities. As with law firms and business generally, it no longer is sufficient to be domestic only; in order to gain prestige and to effectively compete in the U.S. market, schools must have a credible claim to being globally connected, if not global themselves. But despite the reorientation of law schools toward globalization, the regulatory regime in which U.S. law …

A Technological Trifecta: Using Videos, Playlists, And Facebook In Law School Classes To Reach Today’S Students, Dionne Anthon, Anna Hemingway, Amanda Smith

Anna P. Hemingway

Memorializing The Meal: An Analogical Exercise For Transactional Drafting, William E. Foster, Emily Grant

William E Foster

Crowdsourced Coursebooks, Stephen E. Henderson, Joseph T. Thai

Stephen E Henderson

Given increasing criticism and dropping admissions, American legal education is likely to change, hopefully reversing the unsustainable trend of increasing expense without increasing value. Much debate focuses on restructuring the curriculum to make it more “practical” and skills-infused; here we instead propose a rethinking of the basic unit of law teaching, the casebook. Casebook authors and publishers are cautiously venturing into electronic editions, but they fail to harness the power of social learning to make textbooks dramatically smarter as well as cheaper. Working with a technology startup, we are developing an online platform that reinvents both authorship and learning. The …

The First Thing We Do, Jorge R. Roig

Jorge R Roig

India’S State Of Legal Education: The Road From Nlsiu To Jindal, Deepa Badrinarayana

Deepa Badrinarayana

This narrative is a reflection of the changes that the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) ushered in India, prior to globalization. It reflects on the challenges to legal education in India pre-globalization and the efforts made through the creation of NLSIU to address these challenges, and it also introduces some of the challenges facing Indian legal education in a globalized world.